by Luke Palmer
I wonder, in the pause that follows, about all the things I don’t seem.
‘You don’t seem … too … affected. Like, I’m sure you are and everything, but you seem to have it together, you know? Like you’re coping with it. Like you know how to act. Last week at that party.’ She spoke now as if something had unhooked the words from inside her, and they were all flowing out like the stream of fallen rain. ‘You were laughing, and it felt, somehow, like you actually meant it. I mean, I’ve been trying to laugh like that for ages. Years. And I can’t. I can’t seem to mean it. And Carl, he doesn’t get it. I don’t think he really wants to get it. He just wants …what he wants.’ Dana hugs herself tightly at this point and shivers a little, as if unwanted imaginary hands have come to rest on her shoulders, in the small of her back. ‘But you. I can’t figure you out. It’s not like being near him. I can’t go there at the moment because… I just can’t, not at the moment. Sometimes… Sometimes, Carl doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that I don’t want to be near him.’
‘Oh. OK.’
Dana looks directly at me. ‘Can I tell you something, Josh? For some reason I feel I can trust you. Maybe it’s because you never speak to anyone.’
I offer a weak smile.
‘It’s not just “sometimes” when Carl doesn’t get it.’ Her eyes bore into me. Through me, almost. There’s no wall in her eyes at all now. They’re dark, deep and crystal clear. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I nod. There’s a grown-up part of me that wants to understand what Dana’s talking about. But it’s not big enough, regardless of how it seems to her.
‘It’s like I told you about my dad lowering me down that hole in the ground. It’s like it was exciting at first, with Carl. He was so protective, and I really needed that. I think. I felt all grown up, you know? And it was fun, too, I guess. And then it wasn’t. Then it really wasn’t.’ Dana goes back to picking at the flap of tape on the biro. ‘It was like being in that well when I was seven. It was my seventh birthday – did I tell you that? Dad took me for a special big girl’s picnic in the garden. “It’ll be our secret,” he said. I was so happy at first, just me and him. And then he got the rope out of his bag and said we were going to play an adventure game. It was exciting at first, and I trusted him. But then something switched. He lowered me inside and I started asking him to stop, to take me back up. And he stopped listening to me. I couldn’t get out, not on my own, no matter how much I screamed.’ Dana has gotten through the tape and is cracking needles of plastic from the broken end of the pen. ‘Carl’s a bit like that. And you know those times in your dreams when you’re screaming but no noise will come out? And you’re scared you’ve lost your voice completely but then you realise it’s not that, it’s that you’re falling down a well or something, and falling so fast that your mouth is packed full of air and you can’t…’
She stops. Stops like her words have hit the bottom of that well and are lying there, heavy and broken.
I want to get off the bed and go to her and stop the tears on her cheeks. I know I should do it, but the words are lying on me as well. Heavy on top of the anger and confusion of coping with it. Fallen on the dead ground of knowing how to act. I feel completely useless in my anger, unable to see past it.
And even if I wasn’t angry, what does Dana expect me to do about it? She saw what happened when Carl caught me just talking to her. She had a front-row seat. I don’t know why she’s telling me this.
I don’t even move as she gets up and leaves. I just listen as she bangs down the stairs, listen to Mum’s surprised call of ‘goodbye’ after her, listen as her footsteps in the long puddle of the outside world quickly unhook and fade away.
At the window, the gutter is still dripping. I count: one, two, three…
TWENTY TWO
Mum doesn’t ask about Dana for the rest of the weekend. I’m so thankful I could hug her. But I don’t.
On Monday, I quietly avoid everyone. I go back to being in the middle of the class as we pass through the halls and doorways, sit in the middle of the lesson, hiding in plain sight. Hands go up all around me, conversations radiate outwards from my calm and quiet centre. I’m wrapped again in that cloud of silence that descended when Dad died, but this time I’ve summoned it back. It’s nicer in here. It’s comfortable.
It’s there on Tuesday. Even when Jamie tries to introduce me to the new kid, Ahmed, who smiles when Jamie tries really hard to pronounce his name right, and then says it again himself in this warm, soft voice, and gives me his hand to shake while Jamie smiles, and they both keep smiling at me as I walk away. It’s still there, like a soft blanket.
And again, on Wednesday, when Jamie and Ahmed are in the canteen, talking. And when they walk straight past me at the window as I’m looking out at the drizzle, at the last few wet leaves clinging to the trees, the cloud is there, helping me. I’m glad they don’t stop and try to talk to me. I’m glad they don’t see me.
And that afternoon, in English, when Mrs Burgoyne asks me a question that I don’t hear, and when she doesn’t ask me again, I know the cloud’s still there. As I walk out of the room, I’m glad she doesn’t ask me to stay behind like she could have if I wasn’t inside the cloud. I’m glad she just looks at me with those pitying eyes again, with the look, with eyes that follow me all the way out of the room.
On Thursday, I just nod when Mr Walters says he expects to see me for more catch-up work in his after-school session. When I arrive, I sit in the same seat. Vince and Alan watch me cross the room. Alan smiles. Vince doesn’t. I’m vaguely aware of another figure in the back row, probably the other one – Brandon – head on the desk and covered with a coat.
It’s the same as last week: Mr Walters reads his newspaper; I work through a few pages of the A Level text book, this time on genetics; the others do whatever it is they have to do. And again, at the same time, Mr Walters goes out to make his tea.
Alan is at my desk in a flash. ‘I see you’ve been on the website.’
‘What?’ I ask, realising I’m out of the habit of speaking again; I’m far too loud. Vince turns around, bares his teeth.
‘The videos. You were on there a few times this week. I can tell. Monday night, or very early Tuesday morning – you not sleeping or something?’ For the briefest of seconds, his concern seems genuine. ‘And again yesterday evening. My brother set up this thing.’ He takes his phone out. On the screen are rows of digits and symbols. ‘These are dates and times, and these are computer addresses. This one’s you, I think.’ He points to a string of numbers. ‘I don’t really get it. He’s a fucking genius with computers, my brother. It’s what he did when he was in.’ Alan’s grin is so genuine it’s almost infectious.
‘In?’ A horse whisper this time. I’m reeling from my week of silence being broken by such enthusiasm.
‘In the army. Before he left.’
I hadn’t meant to go back to that site. And I didn’t watch any videos, just stared at the screen, at a dozen or so thumbnails, freezeframes of streets at night, the back of a few hooded heads.
‘This is you, I think.’ He points again to the string of numbers. I’m not sure he’s pointing to the same one as last time. ‘Like I said, I’m not sure how it works. But did you see this?’ He opens a new window on his phone. It’s a local news website, with a headline ‘Increasing Hate-Crime Threatens Families’ and a picture of some houses. I recognise them as the ones on Jamie’s estate. There’s something written in red paint on one of the garage doors, but I can’t read it. Alan jerks the phone back into his pocket as Mr Walters comes back into the room.
‘Alan?’
‘Sorry, Sir, just asking Josh about something.’ He stays at my bench, casually leaning on it with his elbow. ‘I’m really interested in,’ he leans further over, staring at the page of the textbook, ‘gun-etics. Gun attacks? Is that in Biology sir?’
Vince makes his fingers into a gun and shoots Alan. Alan’s mock-death is carried off with
lots of moaning and chest clutching, until Vince puts his finger-barrel to Alan’s head and finishes him off.
‘You mean genetics, Alan, you foul and devious cretin. Don’t get involved, Josh. Alan is a foul and devious cretin.’
‘Aw, Sir, and I thought you liked me.’
‘And for my sins, Alan, I do. I too must be a cretin.’
Alan begins to sidle back to his seat. Mr Walters warms to his theme.
‘For some reason, Alan, I do in truth see some value in you. Some faint glimmer of hope that, contrary to your own insidious actions—’
‘What’s insidious mean, Sir?’ Vince pipes up.
‘It means bad, Vince. Bad and getting worse. Contrary to Alan’s insidious actions, I do believe there resides within him the ability to be a decent human being and to live a long and purposeful life.’
‘Is immigration insidious, Sir? Like that new Muslim kid?’
‘That, Vince, is another matter for which we have no time. Pack your things. I’ll see you next week.’ He looks over my shoulder, to the back bench and the figure under the coat. ‘You too, Dana, for what good it’s done you.’
I spin around so fast my stool wobbles violently, just in time to see the door close behind her.
TWENTY THREE
I can’t avoid Alan and Vince this week. They stay and talk to Mr Walters for a while and I leave first, trying to glimpse which way Dana might have gone, but she’s too quick. I run to one end of the corridor and quickly conclude that she must have gone the other way. I hear Mr Walters’ raised voice behind me as Vince and Alan leave the room.
They catch up with me as I emerge from the science block into the seemingly endless drizzle. I was right. Dana must have taken the other exit. There’s no sign of her.
‘Not trying to avoid us again, Milton?’ Vince snarls as he knocks past me.
‘I told you, Vinny, Josh is one of us.’ Alan’s on my other shoulder. ‘He knows what these insidious people can do. What they’re capable of. Don’t you Josh?’
I know that any change in speed or direction isn’t an option.
‘He knows what these scum can do, first hand. He’s been affected.’
That word, used like that, where had I heard that before? I keep walking, my eyes on the floor.
‘Josh knows what these murdering mudskins do. Don’t you, Josh? How they worship a god who says murder is OK, expected even, in his name? It’s like a death cult.’
Vince is so close I can smell the damp, cigarette scent of his breath. I feel it rolling, dark and oily, over my hair and down the side of my face.
‘Josh has been on the front lines. He’s a casualty. And now there’s one of them here. A filthy murderer parading around in our school, in Josh’s school. Isn’t there, Josh?’
I can feel the stitches in my coat pockets starting to stretch and gape as I push my hands deeper, harder into them. But I don’t look up.
‘One of those mudskins with blood on his filthy hands.’
I ache for the cloud to come back down and take me, to wrap me up again. I urge it to come and surround me with silence again. I keep walking.
‘Josh is angry, Vince. He’s angry and he’s right to be angry. It’s disgusting that the school’s let it happen, given the circumstances. It makes you sick, right, Josh?’
I want the world to turn vague, to unhook and float away. But it won’t. It’s clear and it’s hard and it’s right in front of me, pressing against the tip of my nose.
‘It makes me sick, Josh. Watching him walk around like it’s all OK. Like it’s all forgotten. I can’t imagine how it must be for you.’
And it feels like I’m falling into the hardness and the clearness. Falling so fast I want to scream but I can’t.
‘I can’t imagine being you, Josh. One of those people walking around your town. Going to your school. One of those mudskins who killed your dad.’
Then something snaps and I’m running, running hard, my bag thudding into my back, my lungs burning, my legs trying to break the realness of the pavement and the puddles, the pure fire in my stomach rising higher and higher, the prickling sweat under my arms. Vince runs after me and I don’t care, then I hear Alan call him back like a bad dog. The last thing I hear Alan say is ‘See you on Sunday!’ But I’m not listening, just running, running, and I don’t know where I’m running to.
Until I do.
TWENTY FOUR
When I was eight, we went to my grandma’s funeral – my dad’s mum. It was an open casket, and she had been made up to look healthy and glowing. But Dad’s coffin at Westminster Abbey had been closed. There was nothing in it anyway. It was just for the ceremony, glowing with polish but completely empty.
At his private funeral, the week before the Westminster Abbey one, we’d stood around Dad’s actual closed coffin as they lowered it into the ground of the woodland cemetery. As the first handful of cold earth landed on the dark wood, and the noise of its landing became muffled by the earth we threw on next, it got even more closed. And then we planted a tree.
I sometimes wonder – if all the thirty-nine people who died that day had trees planted for them, how big a forest would that make?
Not a very big one.
Dad’s tree is still pretty young and limp. There’s a cylinder of dirty, once-transparent plastic around the bottom of it to keep it from being eaten by deer.
They get a lot of deer in the woodland cemetery.
I don’t come here very much. I know I should do more often, with Mum, but I don’t know what I’d do or what good I’d be. I don’t know what I’d say to him.
I don’t know what you say to a tree.
He’s under there, somewhere. In the ground. The roots won’t have got to him yet, so I guess there’s not much of Dad in the tree. I dreamt, a while ago, that the tree was wearing all of Dad’s clothes; a clean, white shirt that smelled like ironing; one of his old-fashioned ties with the little flowers on that I used to try and count when I was younger; the polished, black shoes with tiny holes in that he’d wear to work if he had important meetings.
I still haven’t dreamt about Dad properly, just the tree. I told this to Mum a while back, and she told me it was normal. She’d had the same dream over and over again about carrying his pannier bag around. It was the pannier that he always took to work, either to the office or if he was off to London; the one that had always sat in the hallway at home every evening before bed, every morning before he left, until it was lost along with him. She was trying to find him so she could give it back. Her counsellor had told her it might be ages until he started coming to her in dreams. She might hear his voice in the background, or see his things, but that he – the whole of him – wouldn’t come for a while. She said – the counsellor – that it’s only after we’ve let go of the objects around the person that the memory of that person will become clear again. And then he’ll come and see us in our dreams.
Mum said it made it easier, knowing that he’d come back when she was ready for him. But I don’t know. Like so many things at the moment, I’m not sure. I just want to see Dad. Especially now.
I want to ask him what I should do. If he’s angry at me. If he’s OK down there under the tree. But I can’t. I stand, useless, watching the bare twigs flop around in the wind.
It’s started properly raining now, heavy and slow, the wind starting to build behind it. As I stand, looking, the heat in my stomach and chest slowly cooling, the pain in my legs subsiding, I notice that the tree isn’t completely bare. There’s one leaf left, a big one, brown and hand-shaped, its five long, curled fingers waving, flailing. The kind of leaf you only get on this sort of tree.
But I don’t know what kind of tree this is.
‘I don’t know what tree this is,’ I say aloud.
Suddenly, the fact of not knowing what tree it is that marks Dad’s grave is the worst thing I’ve ever admitted, and tears spring up, hot and stinging, running down my cheeks, over the bruise that’s starting to fade, and dr
op to the ground at my feet.
I cry harder when I think that this is all I can give him, just a few drops of my hot, angry tears that blur with the rain and fall slowly through the earth to his body, down there somewhere underneath the tree and its roots.
What will he do with those?
And without thinking I lash out at the first thing I can.
And I watch as the last leaf of Dad’s tree, ripped and shredded, is caught on a gust of wind and lifts into the grey sky.
TWENTY FIVE
When I get home, I can still feel the raw rings around my eyes – no need to look in the mirror. Mum doesn’t take much convincing, and I don’t go to school the next day.
I sleep in late, and wake to a cup of tea on the bedside table that’s already gone cold. I can hear Mum clattering around downstairs. I feel strangely cleaner than yesterday. Yesterday, I felt covered and caked in thick mud from the moment I left Dad’s tree until the moment, who knows how many hours later, when I fell into bed. Today, my head doesn’t feel groggy anymore; everything is less fuzzy.
After a shower, I go downstairs. Since Dana's visit, Mum’s gone back to burning the toast, but I’m not hungry anyway and it’s too late for breakfast. She’s taken the day off work. She often does on Fridays.
‘Do you want to come with me this weekend, love?’
‘Where?’
‘Nanna and Grandad’s. They’ve not seen you for months, Josh. It’d be nice if you came.’